Durkheim, Pragmatism, and Sociology

This chapter is devoted to Durkheim’s critical reading of pragmatism mainly in his one-year course in 1913–1914. In spite of the similarities that exist, according to Durkheim, between sociology and pragmatism, he develops a series of theoretical objections against this philosophy, especially concerning the concept of truth. This chapter examines these objections and discusses their political and ideological context, because Durkheim’s positions can also be understood in the context of a French appropriation of pragmatism that is strongly marked by irrationalism. Indeed, pragmatism had a real success in France at the turn of the twentieth century, but more on the side of the spiritualist philosophers in the tradition of Bergson. It was most often used as a kind of intellectual weapon against the dominant rationalism of the French university of the time, of which Durkheim was a prominent figure.